The Devil's Paintbox (41 page)

“Pull him out, boys!” Buck yelled to Sam and Eight-John. Buck picked up a tree limb from the litter of broken branches. It was two inches thick and a yard long—ripped down the middle with jagged ends, the wood inside almost white as the snow. Aiden tried to kick and pull himself out of the drift, but his arms broke helplessly through the frail crust.

“I been waiting a long time to knock you into place!” Buck laughed. It was the oddest thing, but for a moment all Aiden could think about was what a pretty day it was. The snow glistened on the dark trees and glittered in blue ripples over the ground like hair ribbons. The two men flailed clumsily through the branches to get to him. Aiden waited until they reached for him, then grabbed one sleeve in each hand and pulled them forward. He jabbed the heels of his hands up, one into each man's face. He punched Eight-John squarely on the chin so hard he could feel the reverberation of teeth crashing together but the blow was still strong enough to jar him. As they fell, Aiden pushed his palms against their backs, using the leverage to pull himself out of the drift.

Before Aiden could get his footing, Buck swung the stick like a baseball bat. Aiden darted back, avoiding it by inches. He saw Tupic climbing over the fallen tree, scrambling to help him. But the Indian tracker had recovered Buck's rifle and pointed it at Tupic. Buck swung again, and Aiden slipped in the snow. His wet clothing slowed him down, and before he could get back on his feet, the club caught him hard against his leg. He scooped up a handful of snow and threw it in Buck's face, then rolled out of the way and sprang up. Buck cursed, swiped an arm across his eyes and swung again.

Aiden threw up his left arm to block the blow, then caught hold of the stick with his right hand, yanked it as hard
as he could and purposefully fell backward, pulling Buck toward him. Aiden felt the end of the limb hit his shoulder, glance off, then plunge through the snow crust and hit the ground below. He felt splinters gouging his palm as the wood slid through his hand. Then he felt Buck's body, heavy as a sandbag, landing on the jagged point. The tree limb pierced his flesh with a dainty pop, like tearing silk. The torn wood slid neatly between his ribs and ripped through his flesh; then Buck lay motionless, half on top of Aiden, his face in the snow. A thick stream of bright red blood poured out of his neck. Buck made a strange gurgling sound. One hand clawed at the snow, then began to quiver. The stake had gone through at an angle, from stomach to throat, skewering every organ in its path. William Buck's blood steamed and melted a little hole in the snow.

iden let his hands be tied, let Sam and Eight-John drag him to his feet. They weren't bent on killing anyone. They were glad now just to be done with this hunt and on their way home. They slung Buck's body over his horse and roped it into place. Then captors and prisoners all mounted and set off in a silent walk through the snowy woods.

The storm had largely stopped at the next ridge, and what snow there was melted quickly in the afternoon sun, so the going was easy. Time passed and miles passed. The sun drifted across the sky. The trees marched on, all the same. The dead hands of William Buck swung rhythmically and turned dark blue.

It was twilight and Aiden was dozing in the saddle when he found himself pulled off the horse in East Royal St. Petersburg. His legs were cramped and he could barely stand up. He looked around for Tupic and Carlos but did not see them. The door of Napoleon Gilivrey's small house opened and the man stood there, quickly taking in the scene. His hard glance paused only briefly on the dead body of William Buck.

“Did you get it?” Gilivrey asked in his clipped voice.

“Yes, sir.” Sam untied the black saddlebag of vaccine.

“Bring it. Bring him.” Gilivrey turned and walked back into his house.

“Come on.” Eight-John grabbed Aiden's arm, then dragged him over to the house and up onto the small front porch.

“No boot, sir.” Gilivrey's Chinese servant pointed to the bootjack. “No boot.”

Aiden jammed the heel of his wet boot into the notch on the board and pried one foot out, then the other. Though he'd only removed his boots, he felt naked as a raw chick. Aiden stood at the threshold and blinked. He had never seen a house like this anywhere, let alone in the godforsaken middle of the forest. The floor was crowded with so many carpets their edges overlapped. The windows dripped with red and gold brocade drapes. Gilivrey sat down at an ornate gilded desk beneath a gold chandelier.

“Untie him, please,” he said to Eight-John.

“He's dangerous, sir.”

“I am well guarded, thank you,” Gilivrey said.

“William Buck is dead.” Eight-John shifted uneasily on the porch.

“I did presume that, yes.” Gilivrey's face twitched slightly. “By the position of his body dangling across the horse, which I observed as you made your arrival.”

“He killed him.” Eight-John nodded at Aiden.

“That will be all.”

Eight-John pulled out his knife and cut the ropes around Aiden's wrists.

“My clerk will see to you,” Gilivrey said to Eight-John. The man looked as if he might say something more, then thought better. He handed the black saddlebag to the Chinese servant, glared at Aiden and left. The servant brushed past Aiden and shut the door behind him. He walked silently
across the room and placed the bag on Gilivrey's desk. Gilivrey nodded dismissal and the man vanished through a side door.

“Please, Mr. Lynch, come in. Have a seat.” He waved toward a settee, which had already been draped with a quilt to protect the sumptuous fabric from Aiden's filthy self.

“Where are the others?” Aiden said.

“In the stable.”

“Alive?”

“Had I wanted any of you dead, you would be dead by now.” Gilivrey flashed his thin, reptilian smile. “Death is always an … inelegant solution. Also, I've found that anyone really worth murdering is generally interesting enough to keep alive.”

“Then why did you send William Buck to kill us?”

“I sent Mr. Buck precisely because he was too stupid to kill you. Please, sit.”

Aiden had never walked on carpet, and it felt creepy. The settee was unimaginably soft, and he floundered to keep from sinking. The room was overheated and crammed with furniture. Gilivrey opened the black saddlebag and parted the straw carefully so as not to let a stray bit loose to fall on the carpet. He drew out each bottle and held it up to the light to examine the contents. When he was satisfied, he got up and went to a small table in the corner of the room, where there was a silver tray with a cut-crystal bottle and some strange glasses, huge and round as a ball.

“Will you have some cognac?”

Aiden didn't know what cognac was but was glad to smell something like whiskey in the queer glass. It was awkward to
drink from, but he managed a deep, burning swallow. Warmth began to spread to his freezing limbs. Gilivrey settled back in his chair.

“Why did you send Buck after me?” Aiden said.

“Mr. Buck originated the plan, you see; it seemed only fair.” Gilivrey settled into a plush brocade chair opposite the settee. “He was eavesdropping on you and your Indian friend in the barn that night after your fight with the Bull. He heard about your plans to get the vaccine and thought that I would be happy to have your effort foiled and to receive the supply of stolen vaccine myself. He thought it would win him favor with me.”

Gilivrey rolled the glass in his hand and sniffed the aroma with satisfaction. “He had become friendly with one of the boatmen on my supply team who was in camp that night. They hatched a plot to foil you in Seattle. Buck couldn't go, of course, but the boatman beat you there easily, for he did not have to scurry roundabout through the forest as you did. Once you arrived in Seattle, you were easy enough to find. After you visited Dr. Abradale, he assumed you had obtained the vaccine and determined to take it from you.”

“He got men to jump me that night?”

“Yes. Focused on a task, you see, but sadly lacking the intelligence to investigate the situation fully. To learn, as you did rather easily, that the vaccine was already gone and where it was going. I, of course, knew this. All the logging camps were notified, weeks ago, to expect a vaccination team sometime in late January, weather conditions permitting, et cetera. Buck, you see, failed to consider that smallpox vaccine would hardly have the same value to me as it would to your Indians,
being as it is a commodity I can readily obtain.” Gilivrey turned the lamp wick up a bit. “You're not hurting too badly?” He peered at Aiden's bruised face.

“I'm fine,” Aiden said, though a slow trickle of blood from a gash on his forehead was carrying grit into the corner of his eye. He brushed it with his sleeve, a gesture that caused the fastidious Gilivrey to shudder slightly with disgust.

“I knew you wouldn't obtain the vaccine in Seattle,” he went on. “But I was fairly sure that, being of persistent temperament, you would pursue other means to secure it for your Indian. That gave me exactly the opportunity I was looking for.”

“I don't understand. It was coming to you anyway—why go to all this trouble to steal it?”

Gilivrey put his crystal glass down soundlessly on a glossy table beside his chair. “Do you play chess?”

“I know how the pieces move.”

“You do have a certain honesty that one might admire were one more … sentimental.” Gilivrey's lip twitched in what might have been something like a smile. “So you know what a pawn is?”

Aiden recognized that as a clear insult but kept his temper.

“I needed to obtain a supply of the vaccine in secret, and I needed everyone else to think it was gone—stolen for your Nez Perce, sunk in the river, lost over a cliff, it didn't matter, so long as the vaccine was presumed lost and yet came to me. I had been considering options for several months; Mr. Buck just presented me with the ideal one.”

“Why?”

Gilivrey picked up a leather folder, took out a stack of papers and handed them to Aiden. The pages were covered with complicated drawings and notes, some with mathematical equations in the margins.

“This business is changing,” Gilivrey said. “This is a system of levers, ropes and pulleys that will enable us to cut and carry logs from the steepest hills. With these rigs, I can get logs out of impossible places. I can go back into a worked-over forest and pull out trees that no one could cut before. Besides that, the steam engine will be here in another year or two. An engine that can drag ten times the logs of an ox team, maybe even power a mill to cut the trees where they fall. It isn't secret, everyone knows change is coming.”

Gilivrey took back the papers, tapped them neatly together and put them safely away.

“Just north of here is an Indian reservation. No one has cared about that land before now. The hills are far too steep to log efficiently and the river too feeble to carry much out. It was useless land, which is why it was given to the Indians in the first place. But with this kind of engineering, everything changes. Now, soon there will be a million dollars of har-vestable timber up there.”

Gilivrey pulled an immaculate white handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his temples. “Now everyone is looking with hunger at that land. But those Indians are my neighbors, and I am concerned for their continued good health.”

“You mean you have deals with them?” Aiden said, suddenly understanding. “Deals to cut trees on their land?”

“Ah, good boy.”

“But if they all die of smallpox, their land is up for grabs.”

“And I would stand no chance in the grabbing,” Gilivrey said. “I am a foreigner. I came from Russia with nothing and have made my fortune as an outcast, squeezing profit from hostile acres with bound men. I am both admired and resented because of it. I have no connections in the government, nor expectations of fair play. If the Indians all die of the pox, the timber rights will be given to Alvin Tesler or Aloysius Grand. So it serves me that the Indians not die.”

“So vaccinate them,” Aiden said bitterly. He could see how this twisted story was unraveling now. “It isn't against the law.”

“No,” Gilivrey calmly agreed. “But it is understood. Supplies of the vaccine are carefully controlled and monitored.”